STATE HOUSE ROUNDUP -- A bargain driven by the ballot

Monday

Which was good, because despite what the calendar said, it wasn't the day pot shops throw their doors open to 21-and-over consumers, and it wouldn't be the day the fiscal 2019 budget takes effect.

Cannabis advocates, budget-watchers and anyone who's not on the six conference committees still trying to hash out deals might as well take their vigils to Cape Ann or Cape Cod and wait it out in the sunshine.

But don't let what didn't happen last week — the emergence of $41 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that was just days away, the issuance of retail marijuana licenses by a date regulators had targeted — distract you from all that did.

A $5 billion temporary budget signed June 28 bought Ways and Means Chairs Karen Spilka and Jeffrey Sanchez and their teams some time and foreclosed the risk of a government shutdown that some other states are facing. (New Jersey, we'll think of you from our state beaches.)

The running theory that the House and Senate were close enough together on the "red flag" gun bill that they could work their differences out quickly without a conference committee proved half-right when the conferees appointed June 25 got a deal to Gov. Charlie Baker by the 28th.

The Republican governor has said he's "conceptually" in favor of the idea of extreme risk protection orders that allow the temporary removal of guns from someone a family or household member and a judge deem dangerous.

Baker has also said before that he "conceptually" backs raising the state's tobacco age to 21. That concept could soon work its way into the General Laws now that the Senate has joined the House in passing a bill that pairs the three-year age hike with new regulations on e-cigarettes.

With the stroke of a pen -- five of them, actually, including one that seemed to run out of ink -- Baker on June 28 essentially rewrote November's ballot, knocking off three questions with one mega-law that will affect workers throughout the state, and prevent him from needing to step out of his carefully tended middle ground to take a stance on the minimum wage or the sales tax rate.

Another bit of comforting news last week for the governor's campaign advisers -- nearly a month after their party's convention, 61 percent of likely Democratic primary voters still don't have a candidate of choice to try to oust Baker from the corner office, according to a WBUR poll. Most of those polled took a pass on the two Democrats competing in the Sept. 4 primary, Jay Gonzalez and Bob Massie.

As he often is when he signs major legislation, Baker was flanked by Democratic lawmakers as he approved the bill that will phase in a $15 minimum wage, phase out Sunday premium pay for retail workers, establish a paid family and medical leave program financed through a new payroll tax and enshrine an annual sales tax holiday as state law.

At the bill-signing, Baker refrained from commenting on the major new policies themselves and what they'd mean for Massachusetts, instead extolling the virtues of compromise, but his signature amounts to an endorsement of the measures progressives have been pushing for.

"It's a great day. Here, anyway," one Democrat lawmaker said after Baker signed the new law.

And elsewhere? As goes Massachusetts, so goes ... nope, just Massachusetts. For most of the week, the Bay State and the country as a whole seemed to be rowing in opposite directions.

A path to a $15 minimum wage, overwhelming legislative approval for a bill restricting gun access -- and word that swing vote Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy would retire, clearing the way for a second appointee for President Donald Trump and a more-solid conservative majority on the bench.

High court decisions that upheld the president's travel ban, found crisis pregnancy centers need not provide information about abortion and dealt a blow to unions -- while lawmakers here turned their attention to preventing discrimination by corporations and to a slew of issues affecting gay, transgender and non-binary youth.

Speaker Robert DeLeo essentially put out an RFP to labor leaders, encouraging them to come forward with ideas on how the state could respond to the Janus v. AFSCME ruling that public employees cannot be forced to pay fees or dues to a union they don't belong to.

A working group helmed by top DeLeo deputies is throwing its weight behind a Rep. Michael Day bill that aims to prevent corporations from raising religion to win exemptions from nondiscrimination laws. The 17-month-old bill earned a second look after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused a wedding cake to a gay couple.

The House on June 27 passed a ban on conversion therapy that seeks to change the gender identity or sexual orientation of minors, and the next day the Senate voted to allow driver's license and state ID applicants to mark their gender as "X" rather than male or female.

Senators also signed off on a bill they said would make it easier for homeless youth to get state IDs, a measure they called particularly important to the LGBTQ population that has higher rates of youth homelessness.

In Somerville on June 25, state and federal officials did find some common ground, which they promptly broke to kick off the start of the long-awaited Green Line Extension, signaling along the way that they really mean it this time.

State lawmakers had already rebuffed some of Baker's MassHealth reform ideas, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services followed their lead last week in rejecting a waiver request from the governor.

Baker's health and human services wing was disappointed that its request to control rising pharmacy costs was not approved, but officials said they believed that both the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services and Massachusetts still believe in working towards lowering drug costs for public insurance programs.

And Baker, for his part, thinks there's still room for a bipartisan health care cost control effort on Beacon Hill.

He's also hoping lawmakers will find room in the end-of-session traffic for his priority bills addressing the state's opioid and housing crises.

Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito came before the Judiciary Committee June 26, asking the panel to endorse a Baker bill establishing mandatory life without parole for child rapists who use force against multiple victims.

Three State Police officers wound up on the other end of the handcuffs in the early morning June 27, arrested on federal charges of stealing government funds in the form of overtime pay for shifts they never worked.

"Allegations like this where you could have widespread, systemic corruption -- in some ways petty corruption; it's not showing up for a shift or lying about having worked it -- I think you need somebody to look at that, because that kind of rot tends to spread," U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said at a press conference.

Also on the U.S. Attorney's plate is an investigation into A.J. Baker, the governor's son who stands accused of groping a woman on a plane to Boston. Declining to answer most questions, the elder Baker said it's a personal matter for the family and there's an ongoing federal inquiry.

Fresh off its own probe into the deal between UMass Amherst and the now-defunct Mount Ida College, the Senate Post Audit Committee declined to wade in to the series of scandals encircling the State Police.

Chairwoman Kathleen O'Connor Ives told reporters the situation is "so huge in terms of its seriousness and potential criminality" that it essentially was too big for her committee.

"We do have other issues we plan on taking up," she said. "The State Police will not be one, because it is so massive in its responsibility and response to what has been done in terms of breaking the law, that it's actually beyond our responsibility and jurisdiction to take on."

It's not a notion you hear a lot in Massachusetts lately -- let's let the feds handle this one.